(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable information terminal device such as a portable telephone, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) or the like and a telephone directory display method used by the device.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, in a portable information terminal such as a portable telephone terminal or the like, the telephone directory is displayed in the alphabetical order, in the memory number order, in the dial order, and in the order in response to a usage frequency of the telecommunication (the number of calling and the number of called).
In recent years, a capacity of a storage device provided to the above-described portable information terminal has been increased, and some amounts of the information can be held in a telephone directory for accumulating a telephone number of a candidate of the party of the telecommunication and the other information. Thus, since the information held in the telephone directory becomes huge, when a user wants to display the information with respect to a specific party of the telecommunication in accordance to needs, there is a problem such that the handling operation for displaying the target information becomes complicated. In order to solve such a problem, various propositions are made.
In a technology that has been already proposed, simplification of a retrieving procedure is intended by automatically rearranging telephone numbers in an electronic telephone directory depending on a set condition of the electronic telephone directory such as a day of the week and a period of time when calling up the electronic telephone directory so as to call up the electronic telephone directory in the order of priorities along the user's desires (JP-A-2000-358094).
In addition, it is also proposed that, arranging the information held in the electronic telephone directory according to a mode that has been registered in advance, the arranged information is displayed in a set mode (JP-A-2002-125036).
Further, a portable information terminal device capable of setting a priority of the address information display in units of a day of the week is also proposed (JP-A-2002-300263).
Further, it is proposed that the electronic telephone directory recognizes the clock information by itself and in accordance to all of the year, the month, the day, the day of the week, the hour, and the minute, or any combination thereof, the data of the electronic telephone directory can be rearranged (JP-A-2002-354105).
However, if details are set and the information can be arranged in order to immediately display the information that accords with the desire of a user (an operator) as much as possible, this results in the complicated handling of a preparatory stage for this. On the other hand, if this operation is drastically simplified, the user should scroll a display screen in many times till the desired information is displayed. Therefore, according to the prior art, there are some difficulties to secure appropriate convenience.